Thursday, 30 May 2013

The study tour ran
from the 12th to the 20th of May, in Rio de Janeiro, with a focus on
climate disaster risk reduction. The tour was a successful and rewarding
experience, and we would like to share some information with you about
the tour, and invite the ELLA participants to share their experiences
and lessons learned. Please find attached a copy of the welcome pack
giving details on each of the ELLA participants and local participants,
and a summary of each of the meetings attended. Later, a report on the
lessons learned from the study tour will be shared with all.

As the formal learning modules have been completed it is important for
us to take stock of the Learning Alliance, to see what has been of the
most value to you. We are interested in hearing about what you have
liked about the Alliance and how it has impacted on your work.

We
would like to take this opportunity to ask all you all to share with
us, how you might put lessons learned from the ELLA Learning Alliance
into practice or how you plan to collaborate with others on themes that
we have discussed over the past 5 months. As you will remember we have
looked at the role of different actors - from the government, through
institutions, civil society, and down to community members. We have
looked at steps that might be taken to improve urban climate resilience -
including risk mapping, land-use planning, policy actions, DRR
strategies, investments in sustainable infrastructure and resilient
housing, and low-carbon development strategies. We have seen many good
practices from a range of cities across Africa, Asia and Latin America,
and many of you have already mentioned potential action plans and
collaborations that you might embark upon. For those of you that have
not, we would like to encourage you to think along these lines. We would
like to have a little more detail on these onward plans.

Another
very important point pertains to the continuity of this ELLA Learning
Alliance and what we can do to continue to learn from one another in the
coming months and years. Our formal learning programme has come to an
end, but the alliance need not! The Networking Page will soon become the
landing page for those that visit the site, and we will still have the
opportunity to share documents and ideas with one another. If, however,
you have any interest in keeping a structured learning exchange going
and any ideas about about how we might do this in collaboration, we
would be very glad to hear from you.

In summary, this week, we are interested to hear from you about:

1) How the ELLA Learning Alliance has inspired you

2) Any actions that you plan to take or collaborations that you plan to embark upon as a result of the Learning Alliance

3) Any suggestions as to how we might give a structure to our exchange now that the curriculum has been completed

Friday, 3 May 2013

Thank you all for the interesting discussion about infrastructural weaknesses in your cities. Although we heard of relatively few actions in place to improve infrastructure and make it more resilient to climate change, we did hear many suggestions that would help to improve existing weaknesses. We hope that you found the case studies and supplementary reading useful when thinking about potential solutions for your cities.

The required infrastructural improvements identified by participants were common across Africa, Asia and Latin America. These areas included:
- Water supply, treatment and distribution
- Sanitation, waste disposal and drainage systems
- Roads and transportation
- Electricity
- Housing and other buildings

When analysing the reasons for infrastructural weaknesses, an overriding message from the discussion was that infrastructure across these regions was poorly planned. Infrastructure that has been in place for decades and centuries was not designed for the reality of today; and new infrastructure that is developed often does not take environmental considerations into account – looking primarily to fulfil the present needs of the population without thinking about long-term sustainability.

Participants from Bangladesh and India explained that a major cause of the need to improve infrastructure comes from the fact that today demand for infrastructure far exceeds the capacity for which it was designed. In addition to that, in many cases, populations have rapidly settled in areas in a disorganised manner, making the installation of infrastructure challenging and also putting this infrastructure at high risk (i.e. by settling in flood prone areas). Some of you noted that the rising number of migrants in cities is something that was not planned for when infrastructure was designed.

Many of you agreed that infrastructure in your cities is outdated; a participant from Ghana explained that some infrastructure dates back to colonial times. There were many suggestions about the need to upgrade infrastructure and employ innovative technologies. Participants from Bangladesh, Ghana and Zimbabwe pointed out that the problem is not just that the infrastructure is old, but rather that it is not properly maintained. Many of you also commented on the lack of public awareness about how certain infrastructure operates, and that as times it is the local inhabitants that exacerbate existing weaknesses. One participant from South Africa commented that street cleaners sometimes sweep waste into drains thereby blocking them.

When speaking of the construction of new infrastructure two main weaknesses were identified: 1) weak planning and lack of integration, and 2) lack of finance. It was felt that a lack of coordination between stakeholders has been a major setback, as has the fact that climate change and sustainability considerations are not integrated into infrastructural design. Thus new infrastructure quickly becomes outdated or is recognised as being inefficient. Lack of finance was identified as a major barrier, which might be overcome by political will or international support. One participant from Peru spoke of how corruption often leads to the employment of lower quality materials in order to increase profit margins, thus resulting in non-resilient infrastructure.

Thinking about how to encourage ‘no-regrets’ investments in infrastructure, participants suggested the following:
- Improve awareness among leaders and the general populace
- Through advocacy show that prevention is more efficient than response, also share successful case stories from other cities
- Gain political support for development with climate change considerations in mind
- Develop an integrated strategic city development plan
- A multi-stakeholder group, that is devoid of partisanship, should work on plans and action

Additionally, some of you mentioned other means to improve the resilience of infrastructure. Suggestions included
- Sensitisation and behavioural change regarding waste management
- Employment of renewable energy sources
- Introduction, or amplification, of resilient building codes
- Improvement of natural protection through bio-engineering and the strategical plantation of shrubs and trees

Exisiting programmes to improve the resilience of infrastructure included:

Building: Ghana Green Building Council, which is working with local partners to improve the sustainability of buildings. In India, in the city of Bhuj, buildings were retrofitted following an earth quake. A participant from Zimbabwe also spoke of projects to employ eco-friendly building materials.

Energy: Ghana also has a project know as Sustainable Energy for All, which is working to encourage the employment of renewable energy sources and reduce the use of coal and charcoal.

Waste: The Cities Development Initiative for Asia (CDIA) assisted the city of Chennai with a pre-feasibility study for improving waterways and solid waste management. Chennai corporation took these projects on and some actions have been taken to improve drainage and waste management, although there is limited capacity within the corporation.

Water: In Accra, Ghana there has been the construction of a new water treatment plant. In Harare, Zimbabwe there have been actions to replace piping in water distribution systems

We would like to invite you to comment upon this summary, or use this space to add any additional information that you did not have a chance to share during the course of the discussion.

Monday, 29 April 2013

1)
To what extent are you seeing low-carbon development initiatives taking
place in your cities? Please share any innovative cases with us from
your cities.

Currently, there are not so much low-carbon development initiatives taking place in Ho Chi Minh city. I can name so far just few initiatives such as:

- There is national law on energy efficiency and conservation (2010).
- Also at national level, Vietnam has developed Vietnam Green Growth Strategy, which has been approved in September 2012 (more information in the attached file).
- Recently, the vice-chairman of Ho Chi Minh city's People's Committee has approved to pilot using energy efficient lighting for one street in Phu Nhuan district.
- Green pavements in central business district of Ho Chi Minh city.
- City has plans for developing of 8 BRT lines.

2) Do you feel that any of the Latin American
initiatives shared this week might be successfully adapted for
implementation in your city? If so, how might you overcome any potential
barriers?

I like all the Latin American initiatives shared this week, the mainstreaming of solar heating use by law in Belo Horizonte, the turning waste-to-energy landfills and the BRT in Bogota. In my opinion, they all should and can be successfully adapted for implementation in Ho Chi Minh city. Potential barriers would mostly be public awareness and, perhaps financial sources for BRT. It is because in HCMC, people are not so interested in public transport because of bad public transport service and the convenience of using individual motorbikes. I think Ho Chi Minh city should improve service quality of public transport system and should have some communications through different channels to encourage people to use public transport.

3) Do you think that the business model suggested by
Enrique Rebolledo in the waste-to-energy brief might encourage actors in
your city to employ low-carbon technologies?

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

This
week we will be looking at some low-carbon development strategies in
cities across our nations. When we speak of low-carbon development, we
are speaking of long-term development initiatives that take climate
change considerations into account and actively seek to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Low-carbon development is attractive to
a broad array of stakeholders due to the ability of this type of
infrastructure to offer favourable investment opportunities, to
contribution to emissions reductions, and to improve quality of life in a
sustainable way.

In cities low-carbon development can come in
many forms, although arguably the most common initiatives are related to
transportation, energy production/efficiency and waste disposal. This
week we would like to share some examples with you from Latin American
cities related to these three areas, but we would like to encourage you
to share experiences from your cities that may go beyond these.

We
would like to share with you the cases of Bogotá’s Bus Rapid Transit
System, Belo Horizonte’s Solar Energy legislation and Monterrey’s
waste-to-energy programme:

- The famous BRT system in Bogotá,
Colombia, has proved to set a standard for other such systems in Latin
America and beyond, reducing energy consumption, emissions and travel
time for commuters.

- In order to address rising emissions from
buildings ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) began the PoliCS
programme to improve the sustainability of buildings, focusing on
energy efficiency and low carbon technologies: one such initiative was
for the employment of solar energy in Belo Horizone, Brazil, and
legislation to enable this.
- In Monterrey, Mexico the first
waste-to-energy project in Latin America was successfully implemented to
turn waste into electricity savings. The waste-to-energy landfill
technology has led to a reduction in municipal waste problems and
emissions, while simultaneously creating electricity that is used to
power public lighting and the subway system.

This week Enrique
Rebolledo, a low-carbon expert from Mexico, and author of the brief on
Monterrey’s waste-to-energy landfill, will be joining us in the
discussion about low-carbon development strategies. Enrique specialises
in showing the profitability potential of low-carbon, energy saving,
infrastructure.

We would like to encourage you to engage with one another in a discussion around the following questions:

1)
To what extent are you seeing low-carbon development initiatives taking
place in your cities? Please share any innovative cases with us from
your cities.

2) Do you feel that any of the Latin American
initiatives shared this week might be successfully adapted for
implementation in your city? If so, how might you overcome any potential
barriers?

3) Do you think that the business model suggested by
Enrique Rebolledo in the waste-to-energy brief might encourage actors in
your city to employ low-carbon technologies?

Monday, 22 April 2013

1) Are you aware of actions in your city that are improving the climate
resilience of buildings? If so, how do you think that such actions might
be successfully adapted to other urban realities?

I'm not aware of actions in Ho Chi Minh city such as building codes for improving the climate resilience of buildings. There are only some training/instructions on how to stabilise housing structure for storm resilience for poor communities in Can Gio coastal district. However, there is a German funded research on climate-adapted housing and energy efficient building within the Megacity HCMC research project. And I would like to share here the result of this research, which is a useful Handbook for Green Housing. Although it is for Ho Chi Minh city but I think many of the directions can also be applied elsewhere.

2) Do you think that the approaches employed in the Latin American case
studies might be adapted to your function in informal settlements in
your cities?

Yes, I do think that the approaches employed in the Latin American case studies can and even should be adapted in informal settlements in Ho Chi Minh cities.

Tuesday, 16 April 2013

This week we will be looking at how improvements in building standards can increase urban climate resilience. Last week we looked at infrastructure in general, and this week, as promised we will focus in on buildings in particular. There a various measures that might be taken to make buildings more sustainable: some actions involve upgrading existing structures to make them more adaptive to climate change or to help them to mitigate greenhouse gases (GHGs); other actions include innovative designs for new ‘green’ buildings that use natural resources (such as energy) more efficiently and reduce harmful emissions.

So far in this Learning Alliance we have largely focused on how the changing climate affects vulnerable communities, and as such we have two Latin American case studies for you that explore urban upgrading in informal settlements. We are nonetheless very interested to hear about any actions in your cities that relate to increasing resilience in the built environment – be that through new building codes, green roofs, sustainable building designs, urban upgrading programmes, or any others.

Our first case this week is an interview with Mariana Estevão, the founder of an NGO that runs a project to offer architectural and engineering expertise, along with a scheme to purchase building material to families living in a slum in in the city of Niteroi, Brazil. This grassroots project helps families to upgrade housing in order to reduce health risks; such actions include raising the height of roofs to enable more ventilation and thus reduce temperatures, sealing walls so as to reduce humidity and improving roofing so as to reduce leakages. In order to purchase building supplies inhabitants exchange used TetraPak cartons for credits, thus reducing waste and raising the profile of recycling.

The second case is from the informal settlement known as Villa Tranquila, in Argentina. The upgrading programme in this community was distinctly participative, involving multiple-stakeholders throughout the whole process. The upgrading of this community improved access to infrastructure, improved the standard of houses in some sectors and built new houses in others. Aside from the impacts on the built environment, this top-down, government-backed initiative improved complicated social relations within what was a once divided and fearful community.

This week we would like to invite you to view the video interview with Mariana Estevão and read the case of Villa Tranquila and engage with one another in a dialogue around the following questions:

1) Are you aware of actions in your city that are improving the climate resilience of buildings? If so, how do you think that such actions might be successfully adapted to other urban realities?

2) Do you think that the approaches employed in the Latin American case studies might be adapted to your function in informal settlements in your cities?

If you have any questions or would like any more information about either of these two cases we would be happy to pass on your enquiries to our Latin American experts.